Art of seduction

Variations on a theme . . . a detail from Action Half Life, Episode 3 #8 by AES + F. Below: A performance of The Inner Voice/Dead Air by Asta Groting, which centres on ventriloquism.

There will be provocation aplenty in this year's show if Biennale curator Isabel Carlos has her way, writes Lenny Ann Low.

Isabel Carlos, the curator of the 2004 Biennale of Sydney, is being heartily hugged by an excited artist . "Oh, I missed you," says Emiko Kasahara, one of the 51 artists Carlos has selected from 32 countries for her exhibition. "It is so good to see you."

In a far corner of the Biennale of Sydney's bustling Woolloo-mooloo offices, another artist waves delightedly as she waits to speak about the technical progress of a work being completed locally.

Carlos, a very approachable woman with a hearty laugh, is clearly a passionate and generous focal point for her artists, who range in age from 26 to 70. Since 2002, when she was asked to submit a proposal for Sydney's 14th Biennale, a globally prestigious visual arts event opening on Friday, the 41-year-old has visited Australia six times.

During that period, as she perfected her Biennale theme titled On Reason And Emotion, Carlos liaised constantly with artists based in countries as diverse as Russia, Sweden, Angola, Mexico, Finland, Germany and New Zealand. Now, with all but two Biennale artists expected to be in town for the event, the distinguished Portuguese-born curator says she feels like the family is finally able to meet its members.

"Sometimes I joke to people who ask me, 'Do you have children?' " says Carlos. "And I say, 'No, I have artists'. I really like to work with them. I like what they do, too, but I like working with them. Talking with them and following all the steps of creation instead of just picking up the art work at the end."

In keeping with this philosophy, Carlos says this year's Biennale is definitely not an exhibition that comes in a crate.

"I would say that 50 per cent of this exhibition you will see for the first time in Sydney," she says. "That is amazing, I think. And many of the artists have spent much of their time creating their art here."

This year the Biennale will be featured at six venues: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of NSW, Royal Botanic Gardens, Museum of Sydney, the Opera House and Artspace.

Carlos says she has shaped the 10-week event to offer a promenade of art through a city she once perceived as a clean and light version of the film Blade Runner.

"Because the city is so beautiful I wanted exhibits to be not only in museums but in open spaces," she says. "People will find these art works in their everyday walks and then they may be curious to go to the museums.

"I'm proposing that every day in Sydney you can look at art work from different parts of the world, from many different languages, but also enjoy Sydney, too."

Carlos hopes her Biennale theme will work to link audiences more directly with art and break down traditional Western ideas of connecting reason with the head and emotion with the body. She recalls Asta Groting, a German artist who will present live performance and video work based around ventriloquism, declaring her relief that someone was finally focusing on ideas of emotion.

"We must try not to split these things, the reason and emotion, body and mind, north and south," says Carlos. "Much of the art here will appeal not only to your opinion but to your emotion. That is very important."

For a public that is often baffled by the meaning of works presented in their city's Biennale, emotion may become a crucial interpretive tool. This year, viewers will be confronted by Jimmie Durham's installation Still Life with Stone and Car on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House, which features an everyday car smashed by a massive boulder with a face painted on it. The Russian collective AES + F will be exhibiting photographs of beautiful teenagers holding gleaming guns in a desert-based war zone. Derek Kreckler will offer mysterious visions of a refrigerator, Susan Norrie turns her camera lens to the aftermath of an apocalypse and Belgium-born artist Francis Alys's wooden sculpture will be walked between Biennale galleries every day to be publicly rejected.

Visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens may encounter the Spanish twins MP and MP Rosado's sculptures of boys up a tree or Nathan Coley's life-size re-creation of a 1970s building amid native foliage. While Joan Grounds' and Sherre DeLys's eight-metre-high termite mound has already landed on Museum of Contemporary Art's lawn, anyone venturing to the museum's fifth-level toilets will hear disembodied voices asking, "Hello. Are you there?" courtesy of the Portuguese artist Luisa Cunha.

Many artists are asking the public to interact with their work. Rubens Mano's floppy wrap-around eyewear that distorts vision will be distributed to the public and Frederic Post's Le Temple de l'Extase (Temple of Ecstasy) requires viewers to lie on mattresses in a mosque-like environment and listen to live music.

One work that is destined to connect with the public in a very personal way is Lim Tzay Chuen's Proposition. The Singaporean artist is inviting people to compete for inclusion in this year's event by collecting the most ripped-out pages from the Biennale's weighty catalogue (specifically, the first page of Carlos's introductory essay). The winner, who does not have to be an artist, receives $4000, five-star hotel accommodation and a gallery space at Artspace to exhibit art work as part of the Biennale.

While some may find it offensive that anyone should have to secure an exhibition in such a confronting way (the catalogue is not cheap and competitors surely face a difficult task persuading anyone who has bought a copy to surrender one of its pages), Carlos is clearly relishing the reactions to the project. "I don't expect that everyone will love all the work in the Biennale," she says. "Some will like some; others will like others. They are free to decide.

"The only thing I wish is that people will not be indifferent to what they see and feel and listen to at the Biennale."